I spent some of the day trying to work out just where Channel 7’s Battle of the Choirs went wrong. The answers I came up with were as follows:

• David Koch as host – his inoffensive, accountant chic works well at breakfast time, but he certainly lacks the bumbling charm of daryl somers. even bert newton would have been better here – a bit of tv pizazz and glitter please!
• The girl from the kids band on the panel – vacuous is an understatement – give me strength!
• No scoring – part of the drama of dancing with the stars is the revealing of the various judges scores. And even with no scoring, on australian idol the judges are given more of a chance to state their case and establish their personalities – which adds to the overall narrative. this didn’t happen here. all that was established was that jonathan welch’s job is to be the “emotional” one – which didn’t really work either.
• The songs were too short – a choir can simply not establish mood, build tension and musical line in a minute or less.
• stupid song choice – kylie minogue is all very well in her place- but puh-leeze – not for choral singing people
• the whole “battle” metaphor – too resonant of iron chef (and not as entertaining as that little gem)
• they tried to establish the choirs’ personalities through focussing on a few characters – but the whole idea of choral singing is that no-one is the star – so to focus on a few individuals was tokenistic at best. and this is the reason why choral singing on television is problematic – because unlike idol, dancing and other talent shows it is going to be difficult to establish character quickly – so necessary for television.

All in all, it reminded me that tv chemistry is a mysteriously quality that no grab bag of previously successful formulas can be guaranteed to repeat.